


Just Relax (Take It Easy)

by ladybugwarrior



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Character Study, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ENDGAME, F/M, Hurt, I cried twice while writing this, I'm S A D, It's 2k of sadness that I couldn't stop myself from writing, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), and i'm not a crier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 02:11:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18714406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladybugwarrior/pseuds/ladybugwarrior
Summary: She’s seen it happening for a while. With how close she is to Tony it would have been impossible to miss it, the slow unraveling that he’s been suffering through for the past fifteen years."I shouldn't be alive unless it was for a reason." He once told her after she first saw him in the bullet-riddled suit. "I'm not crazy, Pepper. I just finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it's right."





	Just Relax (Take It Easy)

**Author's Note:**

> My brain: have you ever written a sad Tony Stark fic?  
> Me: No?  
> My brain: oh you're going to love it  
> Me: I can't write a sad Tony Stark fic right now. I have homework.  
> My brain: ...I'm going to pretend you didn't say that.
> 
> I really just loved the ending to Tony's arc. He's always been one of my favorite characters, and while his death is tragic, and he leaves so much behind; he deserves peace.
> 
> Title from Father and Son by Cat Stevens

She’s seen it happening for a while. With how close she is to Tony it would have been impossible to miss it, the slow unraveling that he’s been suffering through for the past fifteen years. Pepper’s had a front role seat to all the events that would lead him here, in a grey, broken hellscape that one used to house the world’s beacon of hope. That’s what this place was the last time she was here. The grass was green, and she supported Tony’s shaking body to the car because he refused to let any of the Avengers help. That’s when she thought that this would all end when she watched as the Avengers Compound shrunk in the review mirror— she had to drive; Happy didn’t have the luck that they did. The Compound disappeared, and the Tony plugged in an old Zune he had found on the ship into the car’s radio. Soft guitar and Cat Stevens’ gentle voice filled the air. Tony pretended not to cry as his grip on the framed picture of him and Peter tightened. She pretended not to notice while she drove away. It was supposed to end there.

She always thought the worst for Tony always passed to early. It started in 2008 when he got captured. They were completely different people back then; he’s changed so much that to think about him as a bachelor listening to ACDC in his locked workshop, uncaring for the inconveniences that he put others through, is like thinking about a character. Tony always hated taking things easy, the extreme option always seemed to whisper in his ear to drink more, sleep around, gamble. She didn’t judge him back then because it wasn’t her job to do so, and she doesn’t know because she knows what led to that behavior. That behavior went away after those three months trapped in a cave. He came back with a hole in his chest that ached and strained his lungs, and he came back with a mission. The mission.

 _I shouldn't be alive unless it was for a reason._  He once told her after she first saw him in the bullet-riddled suit.  _I'm not crazy, Pepper. I just finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it's right._

She went along with it because she started to like the person she saw in him. Then Obi happened, then the press conference, the palladium poisoning, Romanoff, and before she knew it Phil Coulson walked out of the elevator and handed Tony a file with files on some of the most remarkable people she’s ever met. Pepper left for business. Phil died. Tony saw a world he would never be able to explain; one he would never be able to forget.

Whatever he saw beyond the wormhole made him unravel faster, without an end in sight. She could only watch him crawl into himself. Nights were spent in an empty bed, date nights were missed, and he created Iron Man suits with a dedication she had never seen before. His mind could only think about the next mission when whoever sent Loki and the Chitauri returned.  Tony fell into a routine: coffee, work, more coffee, more work, continue for a few days until he passed out in the chair at his desk, surrounded by the suits he couldn’t feel safe without.

She moved in to see if her presence would help, and she thinks did up to a point. Tony seemed calmer around her, as vulnerable as he could have been with her. Still, she could sense that he was slipping away. When he slept he had nightmares. Sometimes he could be found on the terrace, looking up at the sky like he expected it to rip open, adjusting the gauntlet on his hand.

The tension between them kept building and building until one day he skipped out on date night, and she snapped at him. He tried to explain himself to her, told her how he would have cracked if she wasn’t there, but he couldn’t sleep. Tony told her that threat was imminent and that he had to protect her, the one thing he couldn’t live without, her. That’s the moment she could no longer connect him with the man who hired her without bothering to take a look at her resume and looking back, it’s the moment that Tony really began to lose himself. Not the billionaire, playboy, philanthropist side of him, but the confidence behind his words began to feel counterfeit. It’s when he began to get desperate, cursed with the knowledge that something would come and try to take away what he loved.

Tony knew. He always knew that this was coming, even if he never knew what  _this_  would become. He was a man of logic, a mechanic, and he saw things that he couldn’t explain. Magic, gods, mind control, armies able to cross the universe in a second. The war always stayed on his mind, broke him down into pieces until he created the evil that he tried to shield the world from by accident. He almost lost the team because of it, the team that kept him sane because its existence meant that there was a fighting chance. He clung onto them for another year until the Accords, until the person he trusted the most lied to him. It was messy, complicated, and left Tony starring at the phones for hours at a time, trying to find it in him to forgive. He wanted to because he knew that it wasn’t as simple as his shocked mind had led him to believe. Rage turned into regret turned into guilt, and soon it became easier to fall back into creating contingency plans than to open the flip phone he always kept in his pocket.

She had begun to worry again after he decided to sell Avengers Tower, but just when she was about to suggest he seek out help, he connected with Peter Parker. Peter was the sweetest kid she had ever met, and Tony’s entire attitude seemed to flip when he was around. The kid exhausted him, drove him crazy, but he made Tony laugh. She saw them working once. They both paced back and forth talking about some project, Tony on the floor, Peter on the ceiling. At one point they struck a breakthrough, and Peter got so excited he jumped up, only realizing that he was headed for the floor with enough time to make sure that he didn’t crack his skull on the concrete. Tony had freaked out at first, but once he saw that Peter was laughing at the stupidity of the moment, he broke laughing too. It was such honest laughter; one she hadn’t seen in a while. He looked beautiful.

Thanos came not long after.

She couldn’t follow him up into space, the place he had feared for so long. All she could do was stay at the Compound and wait for something. It happened so quickly, one minute Happy stood beside her and the next he disappeared. She acted quickly, made sure that all the arc reactor plants that powered much of the country were manned and not about to go critical, coordinated with the Red Cross to help set up triage from all the downed aircrafts, and she did one of the hardest things that she’s ever had to do. Pepper let Steve into Tony’s home. He told her what happened, and she laughed at him with tears caught in her throat.

 _He told you_ , she said, taking satisfaction in the way Steve straightened up, in the way his eyes widened.  _He told all of you._

Twenty-one days later, a woman with blonde hair and a red, blue, and gold suit arrived. The day after that she brought Tony home. He was emaciated, exhausted, and could barely keep himself upright, and there was so much tragedy in his eyes. Peter Parker died in his arms, unaware that he was fading into dust but terrified. Tony told her that Peter begged him to save his life, and Tony could only watch and try to keep him calm as he sobbed in his arms.

Those days were the hardest days, and she feared for his life in a way that she never had before. Then Morgan happened by accident, and his eyes glowed with tears when he smiled down on her. Days got easier for him, even if the memory of all that he lost wouldn’t ever stop haunting him. She knew he felt guilty, knew it when he found the bills for Peter’s memorial service buried in his desk. She knew it when he stared at that picture a little too long.  And she knew when he figured out how to time travel that he had to try and save him, save everyone. Fifteen years ago, he told her that he knew what he had to do, and every day since he dedicated himself to trying to save everyone. If he never tried she would lose him forever.

She’s losing him right now.

The plan worked. Everyone came back, but Thanos came back with them. They fought, and just when everything looked like it would fall apart, and they would lose once again; she saw him. Tony Stark on his knees, six glowing stones on his hand staring at Thanos defiantly, and he said the three words that brought them to this point.

_I am Iron Man._

The world turned white, and when she could see again dust had filled the air as Thanos’ army disappeared, and finally, he joined them. There should have been celebrations, but there wasn’t any. There should be laughter and happy reunions, and maybe there will be, but not here and not today.

She’s known for a while now, known that Tony’s been crushed by the responsibility that he prescribed to himself, drowned himself in it. He hasn’t taken a day off, hasn’t taken a breath, almost ruined himself trying to save this world, and in the end, he’s done just that. He only has a few seconds left, and when he sees her all he can say is her name. Pepper doesn’t know if he’s aware of what’s happening, aware that the suit that he created to save the world has melted into his skin, that he’s dying. She doesn’t know if he knows that he’ll never see Morgan again. That she’ll grow up without him, and that one day she’ll forget the way it felt to have his hand brush the hair out of her eyes. Pepper knows all of that. She knows that one day her daughter may choose to get married and there will be no one there to walk her down the aisle and that she’s losing him now that she had just gotten used to the idea that he wouldn’t die exactly the way he is right now.

It isn’t fair, but she knows that he’s always been willing to die for her, for Rhodey, for Peter, for Morgan. His story was always supposed to end this way, even if she hates it as much as she hated watching him fall apart.

Tony says her name one last time, and he doesn’t take his eyes off of her. He used to say that being near her used to help him sleep, and if there’s one last thing she can do for him, the man she loves, the man she’s loved for more years than she can count, she can be strong enough to do this final task for him.

“We’re going to be okay.” She tells him. “You can rest now.”

He slips away. It’s peaceful, slow and quiet in the way she never thought his death would be even before the suits and the Avengers. She can see his life fade from his eyes that never leave her until they close and Tony leaves. He leaves behind a wife, a daughter, and a legacy that no one will fill, but many will try. She’s never cared much for his legacy, the monuments that will be built in his name, the days off that children will have from school to commemorate the man who gave up everything. She only loves the man who gave his daughter too much candy, who bought that ridiculous rabbit, and the man who danced with her when she had on that ridiculous blue dress.

**Author's Note:**

> [TUMBLR](dontfeedthebabytigers.tumblr.com) | [TONY STARK PLAYLIST](https://open.spotify.com/user/12bi2vdo1y7khazxolv5m4en0/playlist/6Ud4etZd2sLGW8JKaZicWm?si=oGirTjr8RA-PvQJMH_l9_g)


End file.
